Using Singular Value Decomposition to Build a Recommender System
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Last Updated on October 29, 2023
Singular value decomposition is a really trendy linear algebra strategy to interrupt down a matrix into the product of some smaller matrices. In actuality, it is a strategy that has many makes use of. One occasion is that we’ll use SVD to search out relationship between devices. A recommender system may very well be assemble merely from this.
In this tutorial, we’re going to see how a recommender system may very well be assemble merely using linear algebra strategies.
After ending this tutorial, you will know:
- What has singular value decomposition completed to a matrix
- How to interpret the outcomes of singular value decomposition
- What information a single recommender system require, and the best way we’ll make use of SVD to research it
- How we’ll make use of the consequence from SVD to make options
Let’s get started.

Using Singular Value Decomposition to Build a Recommender System
Photo by Roberto Arias, some rights reserved.
Tutorial overview
This tutorial is break up into 3 parts; they’re:
- Review of Singular Value Decomposition
- The Meaning of Singular Value Decomposition in Recommender System
- Implementing a Recommender System
Review of Singular Value Decomposition
Just like a amount akin to 24 may very well be decomposed as parts 24=2×3×4, a matrix will even be expressed as multiplication of one other matrices. Because matrices are arrays of numbers, they’ve their very personal tips of multiplication. Consequently, they’ve other ways of factorization, or usually often called decomposition. QR decomposition or LU decomposition are widespread examples. Another occasion is singular value decomposition, which has no restriction to the shape or properties of the matrix to be decomposed.
Singular value decomposition assumes a matrix $M$ (as an illustration, a $mtimes n$ matrix) is decomposed as
$$
M = Ucdot Sigma cdot V^T
$$
the place $U$ is a $mtimes m$ matrix, $Sigma$ is a diagonal matrix of $mtimes n$, and $V^T$ is a $ntimes n$ matrix. The diagonal matrix $Sigma$ is an attention-grabbing one, which it might be non-square nevertheless solely the entries on the diagonal could be non-zero. The matrices $U$ and $V^T$ are orthonormal matrices. Meaning the columns of $U$ or rows of $V$ are (1) orthogonal to at least one one other and are (2) unit vectors. Vectors are orthogonal to at least one one other if any two vectors’ dot product is zero. A vector is unit vector if its L2-norm is 1. Orthonormal matrix has the property that its transpose is its inverse. In totally different phrases, since $U$ is an orthonormal matrix, $U^T = U^{-1}$ or $Ucdot U^T=U^Tcdot U=I$, the place $I$ is the identification matrix.
Singular value decomposition will get its title from the diagonal entries on $Sigma$, which are known as the singular values of matrix $M$. They are in actuality, the sq. root of the eigenvalues of matrix $Mcdot M^T$. Just like a amount factorized into primes, the singular value decomposition of a matrix reveals masses regarding the building of that matrix.
But actually what described above often called the full SVD. There is one different mannequin known as lowered SVD or compact SVD. We nonetheless must jot down $M = UcdotSigmacdot V^T$ nevertheless now now we have $Sigma$ a $rtimes r$ sq. diagonal matrix with $r$ the rank of matrix $M$, which is often decrease than or equal to the smaller of $m$ and $n$. The matrix $U$ is than a $mtimes r$ matrix and $V^T$ is a $rtimes n$ matrix. Because matrices $U$ and $V^T$ are non-square, they’re known as semi-orthonormal, which implies $U^Tcdot U=I$ and $V^Tcdot V=I$, with $I$ in every case a $rtimes r$ identification matrix.
The Meaning of Singular Value Decomposition in Recommender System
If the matrix $M$ is rank $r$, than we’ll present that the matrices $Mcdot M^T$ and $M^Tcdot M$ are every rank $r$. In singular value decomposition (the lowered SVD), the columns of matrix $U$ are eigenvectors of $Mcdot M^T$ and the rows of matrix $V^T$ are eigenvectors of $M^Tcdot M$. What’s attention-grabbing is that $Mcdot M^T$ and $M^Tcdot M$ are doubtlessly in a number of dimension (because of matrix $M$ may very well be non-square kind), nevertheless they’ve the similar set of eigenvalues, which are the sq. of values on the diagonal of $Sigma$.
This is why the outcomes of singular value decomposition can reveal masses regarding the matrix $M$.
Imagine we collected some e-book opinions such that books are columns and people are rows, and the entries are the scores that a person gave to a e-book. In that case, $Mcdot M^T$ may very well be a desk of person-to-person which the entries would suggest the sum of the scores one particular person gave match with one different one. Similarly $M^Tcdot M$ may very well be a desk of book-to-book which entries are the sum of the scores obtained match with that obtained by one different e-book. What may very well be the hidden connection between people and books? That could be the type, or the author, or one factor of comparable nature.
Implementing a Recommender System
Let’s see how we’ll make use of the consequence from SVD to assemble a recommender system. Firstly, let’s get hold of the dataset from this hyperlink (warning: it is 600MB large)
This dataset is the “Social Recommendation Data” from “Recommender Systems and Personalization Datasets“. It contains the reviews given by users on books on Librarything. What we are interested are the number of “stars” a shopper given to a e-book.
If we open up this tar file we’re going to see an enormous file named “reviews.json”. We can extract it, or study the included file on the fly. First three strains of opinions.json are confirmed beneath:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 | import tarfile # Read downloaded file from: # http://deepyeti.ucsd.edu/jmcauley/datasets/librarything/lthing_data.tar.gz with tarfile.open(“lthing_data.tar.gz”) as tar: print(“Files in tar archive:”) tar.file() with tar.extractfile(“lthing_data/opinions.json”) as file: rely = 0 for line in file: print(line) rely += 1 if rely > 3: break |
The above will print:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | Files in tar archive: ?rwxr-xr-x julian/julian 0 2023-09-30 17:58:55 lthing_data/ ?rw-r–r– julian/julian 4824989 2023-01-02 13:55:12 lthing_data/edges.txt ?rw-rw-r– julian/julian 1604368260 2023-09-30 17:58:25 lthing_data/opinions.json b”{‘work’: ‘3206242’, ‘flags’: [], ‘unixtime’: 1194393600, ‘stars’: 5.0, ‘nhelpful’: 0, ‘time’: ‘Nov 7, 2007’, ‘comment’: ‘This a terrific e-book for youthful readers to be launched to the world of Middle Earth. ‘, ‘shopper’: ‘van_stef’}n” b”{‘work’: ‘12198649’, ‘flags’: [], ‘unixtime’: 1333756800, ‘stars’: 5.0, ‘nhelpful’: 0, ‘time’: ‘Apr 7, 2012’, ‘comment’: ‘Help Wanted: Tales of On The Job Terror from Evil Jester Press is a satisfying and scary study. This e-book is edited by Peter Giglio and has transient tales by Joe McKinney, Gary Brandner, Henry Snider and many additional. As if work wasnt already scary adequate, this e-book gives you additional causes to be scared. Help Wanted is an outstanding anthology that options some good tales by some grasp storytellers.nOne of the tales consists of Agnes: A Love Story by David C. Hayes, which tells the story of a lawyer named Jack who feels unappreciated at work and by his partner so he begins a relationship with a photocopier. They get alongside correctly until the photocopier begins wanting the lawyer to kill for it. The issue I favored about this story was how the author makes you’re feeling sorry for Jack. His two co-workers are happily married and love their jobs whereas Jack is married to a paranoid alcoholic and he hates and works at a job he cant stand. You absolutely understand how he can fall in love with a copier because of he is a lonely soul that no one understands moreover the copier in truth.nAnother story in Help Wanted is Work Life Balance by Jeff Strand. In this story an individual works for a corporation that begins to let their employees do what they want at work. It begins with letting them come to work barely later than atypical, then the employees are allowed to hug and kiss on the job. Things get really out of hand though when the company begins letting employees carry knives and stab each other, as long as it doesnt intrude with their job. This story is meant to be additional humorous then scary nevertheless nonetheless has its scary moments. Jeff Strand does a terrific job mixing humor and horror on this story.nAnother good story in Help Wanted: On The Job Terror is The Chapel Of Unrest by Stephen Volk. This is a gothic horror story that takes place throughout the 1800s and has to handle an undertaker who has the duty of capturing and embalming a ghoul who has been consuming lifeless our our bodies in a graveyard. Stephen Volk by the use of his use of pictures in describing the graveyard, the chapel and the clothes of the time, transports you into an 1800s gothic setting that rang a bell in my memory of Bram Stokers Dracula.nOne additional story on this anthology that I’ve to say is Expulsion by Eric Shapiro which tells the story of a mad man going proper right into a office to kill his fellow employees. This is a very transient nevertheless very extremely efficient story that may get you into the ideas of a disgruntled employee nevertheless manages to complete on a optimistic discover. Though there have been tales I didnt like in Help Wanted, all in all its a wonderful anthology. I extraordinarily counsel this e-book ‘, ‘shopper’: ‘dwatson2’}n” b”{‘work’: ‘12533765’, ‘flags’: [], ‘unixtime’: 1352937600, ‘nhelpful’: 0, ‘time’: ‘Nov 15, 2012’, ‘comment’: ‘Magoon, Okay. (2012). Fire throughout the streets. New York: Simon and Schuster/Aladdin. 336 pp. ISBN: 978-1-4424-2230-8. (Hardcover); $16.99.nKekla Magoon is an author to take a look at (http://www.spicyreads.org/Author_Videos.html- scroll down). One of my favorite books from 2007 is Magoons The Rock and the River. At the time, I mentioned in opinions that now now we have only some books that even level out the Black Panther Party, to not point out handle them in a cautious, thorough strategy. Fire throughout the Streets continues the story Magoon began in her debut e-book. While her familys financial fortunes drip away, not helped by her mothers ingesting and assortment of boyfriends, the Panthers current a very precise respite for Maxie. Sam continues to be dealing with the demise of his brother. Maxies relationship with Sam solely serves to confuse and upset them every. Her buddies, Emmalee and Patrice, are slowly drifting away. The Panther Party is the one issue that seems to make sense and he or she basks in its routine and consistency. She longs to develop to be a full member of the Panthers and frequently battles alongside along with her Panther brother Raheem over her maturity and talent to do higher than office duties. Maxie wishes to have her private gun. When Maxie discovers that there is any individual working with the Panthers that is leaking data to the federal authorities about Panther train, Maxie investigates. Someone is trying to destroy the one place that provides her shelter. Maxie is determined to search out the identification of the traitor, contemplating that it’s going to present her value to the group. However, the truth simply is not simple and it is filled with ache. Unfortunately we nonetheless should not have many teen books that deal significantly with the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the Black Panther Party, and the social points in Chicago that consequence within the civil unrest. Thankfully, Fire throughout the Streets lives as a lot as the same old Magoon set with The Rock and the River. Readers will actually really feel like they’ve stepped once more in time. Magoons factual tidbits add journalistic realism to the story and solely improves the setting. Maxie has spunk. Readers will empathize alongside along with her Atlas-task of attempting to hold onto her world. Fire throughout the Streets belongs in all heart school and highschool libraries. While readers are ready to study this story independently of The Rock and the River, I strongly urge readers to study every and in order. Magoons recognition by the Coretta Scott King committee and the NAACP Image awards are NOT errors!’, ‘shopper’: ‘edspicer’}n” b'{‘work’: ‘12981302’, ‘flags’: [], ‘unixtime’: 1364515200, ‘stars’: 4.0, ‘nhelpful’: 0, ‘time’: ‘Mar 29, 2013’, ‘comment’: “Well, I positively favored this e-book greater than the ultimate throughout the sequence. There was a lot much less combating and further story. I favored every Toni and Ricky Lee and thought they’ve been pretty good collectively. The banter between the two was sweet and often situations humorous. I cherished seeing various the earlier characters and naturally it’s always good to be launched to new ones. I merely shock what variety of additional of these books there could be. At least two hopefully, one each for Rory and Reece. “, ‘shopper’: ‘amdrane2′}n’ |
Each line in opinions.json is a doc. We are going to extract the “user”, “work”, and “stars” space of each doc as long as there are no missing information amongst these three. Despite the title, the information are normally not well-formed JSON strings (most notably it makes use of single quote comparatively than double quote). Therefore, we will not use json package deal deal from Python nevertheless to utilize ast to decode such string:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 | ... import ast opinions = [] with tarfile.open(“lthing_data.tar.gz”) as tar: with tar.extractfile(“lthing_data/opinions.json”) as file: for line in file: doc = ast.literal_eval(line.decode(“utf8”)) if any(x not in doc for x in [‘user’, ‘work’, ‘stars’]): proceed opinions.append([record[‘user’], doc[‘work’], doc[‘stars’]]) print(len(opinions), “information retrieved”) |
1 | 1387209 information retrieved |
Now we must always all the time make a matrix of how completely totally different prospects value each e-book. We make use of the pandas library to help convert the data we collected proper right into a desk:
1 2 3 4 | ... import pandas as pd opinions = pd.DataPhysique(opinions, columns=[“user”, “work”, “stars”]) print(opinions.head()) |
1 2 3 4 5 6 | shopper work stars 0 van_stef 3206242 5.0 1 dwatson2 12198649 5.0 2 amdrane2 12981302 4.0 3 Lila_Gustavus 5231009 3.0 4 skinglist 184318 2.0 |
As an occasion, we try to not use all information with a function to avoid wasting time and memory. Here we have in mind solely these prospects who reviewed higher than 50 books and likewise these books who’re reviewed by higher than 50 prospects. This strategy, we trimmed our dataset to decrease than 15% of its genuine dimension:
1 2 3 4 5 | ... # Look for the purchasers who reviewed higher than 50 books usercount = opinions[[“work”,“user”]].groupby(“shopper”).rely() usercount = usercount[usercount[“work”] >= 50] print(usercount.head()) |
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 | work shopper 84 -Eva- 602 06nwingert 370 1983mk 63 1dragones 194 |
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 | shopper work 10000 106 10001 53 1000167 186 10001797 53 10005525 134 |
1 2 3 4 | ... # Keep solely the favored books and energetic prospects opinions = opinions[reviews[“user”].isin(usercount.index) & opinions[“work”].isin(workcount.index)] print(opinions) |
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 | shopper work stars 0 van_stef 3206242 5.0 6 justine 3067 4.5 18 stephmo 1594925 4.0 19 Eyejaybee 2849559 5.0 35 LisaMaria_C 452949 4.5 … … … … 1387161 connie53 1653 4.0 1387177 BruderBane 24623 4.5 1387192 StuartAston 8282225 4.0 1387202 danielx 9759186 4.0 1387206 jclark88 8253945 3.0 [205110 rows x 3 columns] |
Then we’ll make use of “pivot table” carry out in pandas to remodel this proper right into a matrix:
1 2 | ... reviewmatrix = opinions.pivot(index=“shopper”, columns=“work”, values=“stars”).fillna(0) |
The consequence’s a matrix of 5593 rows and 2898 columns

Here we represented 5593 prospects and 2898 books in a matrix. Then we apply the SVD (it’s going to take a while):
1 2 3 4 | ... from numpy.linalg import svd matrix = reviewmatrix.values u, s, vh = svd(matrix, full_matrices=False) |
By default, the svd() returns a full singular value decomposition. We choose a lowered mannequin so we’ll use smaller matrices to avoid wasting plenty of memory. The columns of vh correspond to the books. We can based mostly totally on vector space model to hunt out which e-book are most very similar to the one we’re :
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 | ... import numpy as np def cosine_similarity(v,u): return (v @ u)/ (np.linalg.norm(v) * np.linalg.norm(u)) highest_similarity = –np.inf highest_sim_col = –1 for col in differ(1,vh.kind[1]): similarity = cosine_similarity(vh[:,0], vh[:,col]) if similarity > highest_similarity: highest_similarity = similarity highest_sim_col = col print(“Column %d is most very similar to column 0” % highest_sim_col) |
And throughout the above occasion, we try to find the e-book that is best match to to first column. The consequence’s:
1 | Column 906 is most very similar to column 0 |
In a recommendation system, when a shopper picked a e-book, we’d current her various totally different books that are very similar to the one she picked based mostly totally on the cosine distance as calculated above.
Depends on the dataset, we’d use truncated SVD to chop again the dimension of matrix vh. In essence, this suggests we’re eradicating various rows on vh that the corresponding singular values in s are small, sooner than we use it to compute the similarity. This would most likely make the prediction additional right as these a lot much less vital choices of a e-book are away from consideration.
Note that, throughout the decomposition $M=UcdotSigmacdot V^T$ everyone knows the rows of $U$ are the purchasers and columns of $V^T$ are books, we will not set up what are the meanings of the columns of $U$ or rows of $V^T$ (an equivalently, that of $Sigma$). We know they could be genres, as an illustration, that current some underlying connections between the purchasers and the books nevertheless we will not be sure what exactly are they. However, this does not stop us from using them as choices in our recommendation system.
Tying all collectively, the following is the entire code:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 | import tarfile import ast import pandas as pd import numpy as np # Read downloaded file from: # http://deepyeti.ucsd.edu/jmcauley/datasets/librarything/lthing_data.tar.gz with tarfile.open(“lthing_data.tar.gz”) as tar: print(“Files in tar archive:”) tar.file() print(“nSample information:”) with tar.extractfile(“lthing_data/opinions.json”) as file: rely = 0 for line in file: print(line) rely += 1 if rely > 3: break # Collect information opinions = [] with tarfile.open(“lthing_data.tar.gz”) as tar: with tar.extractfile(“lthing_data/opinions.json”) as file: for line in file: try: doc = ast.literal_eval(line.decode(“utf8”)) moreover: print(line.decode(“utf8”)) enhance if any(x not in doc for x in [‘user’, ‘work’, ‘stars’]): proceed opinions.append([record[‘user’], doc[‘work’], doc[‘stars’]]) print(len(opinions), “information retrieved”) # Print various sample of what we collected opinions = pd.DataPhysique(opinions, columns=[“user”, “work”, “stars”]) print(opinions.head()) # Look for the purchasers who reviewed higher than 50 books usercount = opinions[[“work”,“user”]].groupby(“shopper”).rely() usercount = usercount[usercount[“work”] >= 50] # Look for the books who reviewed by higher than 50 prospects workcount = opinions[[“work”,“user”]].groupby(“work”).rely() workcount = workcount[workcount[“user”] >= 50] # Keep solely the favored books and energetic prospects opinions = opinions[reviews[“user”].isin(usercount.index) & opinions[“work”].isin(workcount.index)] print(“nSubset of data:”) print(opinions) # Convert information into user-book analysis ranking matrix reviewmatrix = opinions.pivot(index=“shopper”, columns=“work”, values=“stars”).fillna(0) matrix = reviewmatrix.values # Singular value decomposition u, s, vh = np.linalg.svd(matrix, full_matrices=False) # Find the easiest similarity def cosine_similarity(v,u): return (v @ u)/ (np.linalg.norm(v) * np.linalg.norm(u)) highest_similarity = –np.inf highest_sim_col = –1 for col in differ(1,vh.kind[1]): similarity = cosine_similarity(vh[:,0], vh[:,col]) if similarity > highest_similarity: highest_similarity = similarity highest_sim_col = col print(“Column %d (e-book id %s) is most very similar to column 0 (e-book id %s)” % (highest_sim_col, reviewmatrix.columns[col], reviewmatrix.columns[0]) ) |
Further learning
This half provides additional belongings on the topic when you’re attempting to go deeper.
Books
- Introduction to Linear Algebra, Fifth Edition, 2023.
APIs
Articles
Summary
In this tutorial, you discovered how one can assemble a recommender system using singular value decomposition.
Specifically, you found:
- What a singular value decomposition suggest to a matrix
- How to interpret the outcomes of a singular value decomposition
- Find similarity from the columns of matrix $V^T$ obtained from singular value decomposition, and make options based mostly totally on the similarity
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